Green Economy Turns Brown As Homelessness Surges In Bay Area

The applied policies of the UN’s Agenda 21 and the New Urban Agenda is wreaking havoc in American cities, but no one is admitting that the homeless crisis is a direct result of those policies. ⁃ TN Editor

San Francisco recently released the results of its 2019 point-in-time homeless census conducted in January, and the news appeared nothing less than disastrous, as SF’s homeless headcount increased by the hundreds despite the city’s seemingly ceaseless efforts to provide relief.

However, the San Francisco count alone does not provide the whole story. The 2019 homelessness spike in SF came amid a tide of similar baleful results across the Bay Area.

Five out of nine Bay Area Counties—i.e., all of those not located in the North Bay—saw their homeless counts spike during the same period, with each other county showing worse homelessness surges than SF:

To review, San Francisco’s report to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development cited a count of 8,011 homeless persons, an increase of 6.8 percent from 7,499 in 2017. Note that the city’s own internal count is higher (at more than 9.700 persons) because SF uses a broader definition of who counts as homeless. Since that standard is unique to San Francisco, it’s hard to compare the figure with other counties. [Correction: The count submitted to HUD for 2017 count was 6,858, making for a 16.8 percent increase over two years. The 7,499 figure was the local count.]

San Mateo County’s homeless count spiked up to 1,512, more than 20 percent more than the 1,253 count from two years ago, and up from 1,483 in 2015.

Santa Clara County reported a count of 9,706 for 2019. In 2017, the count was 7,394, making for an increase of more than 31 percent. But in 2015, the homelessness estimate was 6,556. Note that although Santa Clara County has a higher homeless population than SF it also has about double the general population of SF County, at more than 1.9 million.

Alameda County’s figure came in at 8,022, up 42.5-plus percent from 2017’s figure of 5,629. On a slighter longer timeline, the increase is even worse, as this latest count is nearly double that of the 4,040 in 2015. Like Santa Clara County, Alameda has a larger homeless population but also more people in general, meaning that SF’s per capita homelessness rate remains the highest in the Bay Area.

Contra Costa County saw a similar surge, spiking up to 2,295. That’s 42.8 percent more than the previous count of 1,607, although that count was down significantly from 2,030 in 2015. Since Contra Costa County conducts its counts annually, we see from the 2018 report that almost all of that rise happened between 2017 and 2018 when the figure was 2,234.

Economist: Modest Carbon Tax Would Hurt Future Generations

Famed economist, Dr. Laurence Kotlikoff, concludes that even a small carbon tax today will cause economic loss to at least two future generations, and possibly more. In short, carbon tax will do just the opposite of what climate alarmists claim. ⁃ TN Editor

One of the main themes of my writings on climate change at IER has been warning the public that the “consensus science” they are hearing from the media, pundits, and certain political figures is utterly divorced from the actual published literature, especially when it comes to the economic analysis of government policy. A new, cutting edge working paper from some big-name economists — including Laurence Kotlikoff and Jeffrey Sachs — confirms my point.

In this case, here is the shocking fact that their paper tries to grapple with: Even with a relatively modest carbon tax, the rise in energy prices is so painful that it swamps the benefits of slower climate change, and this is true for our kids and grandkids. It is only when we get to our great-grandchildren that humanity on net would start to actually benefit from even a modest carbon tax introduced today. So the next time you hear someone say, “We need to take vigorous action on the climate for future generations!” you can clarify, “Actually, your proposals would hurt the next two future generations. You want to hurt us, our kids, and our grandkids, in order to help our great-grandkids and beyond — who will all be fantastically rich compared to us, by the way.”

The Kotlikoff et al. paper is quite technical, so I’ll just summarize the take-away points for a lay audience. I will also spend time at the end of the article explaining what their proposed solution is, for this thorny problem. To avoid confusion, I want to be clear: The authors of this new paper are for a (modest) carbon tax. But they are warning that the current discussion, even among economists, tends to look at “what’s best for humanity from now until the end of time,” rather than checking to make sure each generation gains from a new climate policy. As we’ll see, Kotlikoff et al. suggest a massive fiscal transfer that allows present generations to run up a huge (additional) government debt that our descendants must then effectively pay back with higher taxes, in order to compensate their forebears for suffering through higher energy prices due to a carbon tax.

The point of my article isn’t to endorse the overall recommendation of Kotlikoff et al.; along with climate scientists at Cato, I’ve published a comprehensive critique of the usual economist’s case for a carbon tax. Rather, by shining a spotlight on the cutting edge in the development of the literature on carbon taxation, I want readers to see just how detached the actual discussion among experts is from the breezy claims about “we have 12 years left to save our children” that we hear from pundits and political officials.

How An “Optimal” Carbon Tax Can Punish Into the Third Generation

To set the stage for my interpretation, let’s first quote from the authors’ own description of their results. (Note, readers who don’t have access through the NBER link above can also see a version of the paper posted at Kotlikoff’s website.) The title of the paper is, “MAKING CARBON TAXATION A GENERATIONAL WIN WIN.” Here’s an excerpt from the Abstract:

Carbon taxation has been studied primarily in social planner or infinitely lived agent models, which trade off the welfare of future and current generations.Such frameworks obscure the potential for carbon taxation to produce a generational win-win. This paper develops a large-scale, dynamic 55-period, OLG [Overlapping Generations — rpm] model to calculate the carbon tax policy delivering the highest uniform welfare gain to all generations. The OLG framework, with its selfish generations, seems far more natural for studying climate damage. Our model features coal, oil, and gas, each extracted subject to increasing costs, a clean energy sector, technical and demographic change, and Nordhaus (2017)’s temperature/damage functions. Our model’s optimal uniform welfare increasing (UWI) carbon tax starts at $30 tax, rises annually at 1.5 percent and raises the welfare of all current and future generations by 0.73 percent on a consumption-equivalent basis. Sharing efficiency gains evenly requires, however, taxing future generations by as much as 8.1 percent and subsidizing early generations by as much as 1.2 percent of lifetime consumption. Without such redistribution (the Nordhaus “optimum”), the carbon tax constitutes a win-lose policy with current generations experiencing an up to 0.84 percent welfare loss and future generations experiencing an up to 7.54 percent welfare gain. [Kotlikoff et al., bold added.]

Although I realize this is difficult technical language for the layperson to parse, here’s what the authors are saying: If we take the “gold standard” (their term later on) in this literature and use Nordhaus’s 2017 model calibration, it will recommend an “optimal carbon tax” that correctly — according to standard economic theory and the best estimates from the climate science research — balances the tradeoff between reducing emissions and harming economic growth.

However — and this is a huge caveat — Nordhaus’s approach assumes there is a benevolent, overarching “social planner” who lumps all of humanity together, and only makes a technical allowance for a (modest) discount on the happiness of future generations in accordance with standard economic theory.

In practice, the authors point out, Nordhaus’s “optimal carbon tax” would actually mean that people living or born today and in the near future will be harmed on net by the policy, because they will suffer worse economic harm from higher energy prices, than they will be spared in climate change damages from reduced emissions. It’s only when we get several generations into the future, that Nordhaus’s “optimal carbon tax” actually starts making human beings better off, compared to the status quo.

This is a critical point for Americans to realize. They are constantly being hectored that if they “cared for their children” they would support a large carbon tax and other aggressive interventions. But we see that this isn’t true: If we even adopt a modest carbon tax — one that still allows 4 degrees Celsius warming (over twice the 1.5 degree currently touted by climate activists as the necessary target), according to the authors (p. 22)1 — then we are harming ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren, relative to the “do nothing” baseline. It’s only our great-grandchildren, who (on average) are going to be fantastically wealthy compared to us, who will actually start reaping net benefits from even this modest reduction in the path of emissions.

Anatomy Of A Failed Solar Power Project: A ‘Large Taxpayer-Funded Pile Of Scrap’

The world will be littered with failed solar and wind projects like this one that are pointedly unable to ever deliver on their utopian promises. Meanwhile, taxpayers get hosed while fat-cat Technocrats get paid hefty salaries. ⁃ TN Editor

It was supposed to supply cheaper, greener energy to up to 5000 homes but after six years and tens of millions of dollars, a cutting-edge solar energy project has produced nothing other than a large taxpayer-funded pile of scrap.

Three thousand solar panels sit unused on a concrete pad after the pioneering Kogan Creek Solar Boost project was shelved due to rusting pipes and “rapidly moving clouds”.

Now the site’s manager alleges the Commonwealth and Queensland governments breached their contractual requirements by never inspecting the doomed $105 million project.

Run by French nuclear group Areva for Queensland state-owned power utility CS Energy, the project was designed to increase efficiency and reduce carbon emissions at the coal-fired Kogan Creek power station near Chinchilla.

The plan had been to use thousands of mirrors to focus solar energy to pre-heat steam used to drive power-generating turbines. The technology’s inventor, Australian scientist Dr David Mills, in 2014 received an Order Of Australia for his work on solar power from the Abbott government.

But CS Energy scrapped the unfinished scheme last year, blaming “technical and contractual problems”. It won’t reveal exactly how much it cost, but recorded a $70 million impairment in its 2016 accounts because of the scheme.

Half that amount came from the Queensland Government’s Carbon Reduction Program.

Commonwealth body the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) was to put up an additional $35 million in funding, although it told Fairfax Media it ended up handing over only $6.4 million.

The plan had been to use thousands of mirrors to focus solar energy to pre-heat steam used to drive power-generating turbines. The technology’s inventor, Australian scientist Dr David Mills, in 2014 received an Order Of Australia for his work on solar power from the Abbott government.

But CS Energy scrapped the unfinished scheme last year, blaming “technical and contractual problems”. It won’t reveal exactly how much it cost, but recorded a $70 million impairment in its 2016 accounts because of the scheme.

Half that amount came from the Queensland Government’s Carbon Reduction Program.

Commonwealth body the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) was to put up an additional $35 million in funding, although it told Fairfax Media it ended up handing over only $6.4 million.

Meanwhile, a shipment of steel Areva imported from China was of such poor quality it had to be buried as scrap; then a company in Newcastle making another key component went into administration.

He said at one stage Areva flew 40 workers to the site from the US but they arrived without appropriate safety gear or training.

“They had no safety boots, they thought it was alright to go on site with normal shoes. I said: ‘Pack them back on the plane’.”

Mr Canham estimated that Areva received between $45 million and $48 million for the project but spent as much as $95 million, representing a loss to the company of nearly $50 million.

According to Mr Canham, the head contract required regular site visits by the funding bodies.

“ARENA never came to the site,” he said.

“They were supposed to come every three months. They were really into this solar thing and they never came once.

New York State Lawmakers Set To Mandate Green Economy

Political madness and rampant deception have suckered the entire State of New York into creating its own private version of AOC’s Green New Deal. It will cost taxpayers trillions in wasted capital and in increased living expenses. ⁃ TN Editor

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said yesterday he has reached an agreement with legislative leaders over a bill to slash New York’s greenhouse gas emissions, setting the stage for one of the most significant state climate victories since President Trump took office.

The announcement, coming just days before the close of the legislative session, represented a big victory for climate activists, who have spent three years pushing for major legislation to curb greenhouse gases in the Empire State.

Lawmakers were still working on final amendments yesterday, but the outlines of the deal were becoming clear. The legislation calls for reducing emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030 and 85% by 2050. The remaining 15% of emissions would be offset, making the state carbon neutral. The bill would also require that all electricity generation come from carbon-free sources by 2040. A Climate Action Council would be established to ensure the state meets its targets.

“I believe we have an agreement, and I believe it is going to pass,” Cuomo said in a radio interview on WAMC.

The comment ended months of speculation over the fate of climate legislation in New York. Democratic lawmakers, who seized complete control of state government when they took over the state Senate last fall, had been pushing a bill called the “Climate and Community Protection Act.” The bill would spend 40% of the state’s clean energy revenues on energy efficiency measures and renewable installations in disadvantaged communities.

That drew repeated public objections from Cuomo, who said he wanted to ensure that environmental revenue was spent on environmental programs. Ultimately, the two sides settled on a compromise: At least 35% of revenues would go to disadvantaged communities. That funding could rise as high as 40%, which would amount to $370 million in fiscal 2018-19.

“It was a question of the distribution of the funding,” Cuomo told WAMC. “I understand the politics on these issues. Everyone wants to make all these advocacy groups happy. Taxpayers’ money is taxpayers’ money. And if it’s taxpayers’ money for an environmental purpose, I want to make sure it’s going to an environmental purpose.

“This transformation to a new green economy is very expensive. We don’t have the luxury of using funding for political purposes.”

Business interests had urged Cuomo and Democratic lawmakers to slow down, saying the legislation threatened 40,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. The Business Council of New York State called zero carbon emissions “unrealistic.”

But Democratic lawmakers forged ahead, working through the weekend to iron out a deal with Cuomo before a filing deadline for legislation Sunday. They argued that the risks of climate change, coupled with the benefits of a green energy economy, outweighed the potential costs.

“It means that on Father’s Day, when I see my grandchildren next year, I’ll have a lot less uncertainty about their future than I did yesterday morning,” said Democratic Assemblyman Steve Englebright, a champion of the climate legislation. “It means we are going to be in the vanguard among states, tackling a problem that will affect every jurisdiction here and around the globe. New York will lead the way.”

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D) said New York’s action would send a major signal to markets, helping companies plan for a cleaner future. But ultimately, he said, lawmakers were responding to voters.

“Our constituents told us, ‘Don’t come back without doing something on climate,'” Kaminsky said. “The future is now. I think we’ve taken that important step.”

‘Policy mandate with teeth’

Republican control of the state Senate meant climate policy in New York had been centered in the governor’s office until this year. Cuomo has pumped out executive orders banning hydraulic fracturing, calling for the closure of the state’s remaining coal plants in 2020 and targeting a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, among other things.

The legislation enshrines many of Cuomo’s targets into law, ensuring they will outlast the current governor. The new Climate Action Council would be required to issue recommendations on how to install 6 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2025, 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035 and 3 GW of energy storage by 2030.

Ohio Rejects Renewables Mandate To Back Nuclear, Coal

This only proves that renewable energy is not a fait accompli as Sustainable Development wonks suppose. The partial rejection of renewable energy favors nuclear power over wind and solar, but has pitted the oil and gas industry against nuclear. ⁃ TN Editor

The Ohio House on Wednesday passed a bill 53-43 that would subsidize nuclear and coal plants while eliminating a green energy mandate that now pushes utilities to more renewable energy and efficiency resources.

The “clean air program” would raise $190 million annually, charging ratepayers up to $1 monthly through 2026, mostly to fund First Energy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants. The bill would also allow electric distribution utilities to charge customers a monthly fee, which requires state regulatory approval, to recover part of their ownership stake in Ohio Valley Electric Corporation’s (OVEC) Kyger Creek and Indiana-based Clifty Creek coal-fired plants.

The bill is expected to pass the Senate due to the support of Republicans and Gov. Mike DeWine, R, according to research firm ClearView Energy Partners VP Tim Fox, although state senators haven’t gone on the record to support nuclear subsidies. Ohio is expected to enact a nuclear assistance program before June 26, based on the deadlines FES has set to continue operation of its nuclear plants, Fox said in a note to clients.

While the House brought back some renewable provisions that had been stripped out in committee, advocates for renewable energy, natural gas and consumer rights bemoaned the passage of the bill, hailing it as a way to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal to subsidize coal plants.

By repealing the state’s broad renewable portfolio standard, the bill would eliminate a monthly surcharge of less than $5 from residential customers to help utilities obtain 12.5% of their power from renewable resources by 2027.

But while the bill eliminates the mandate, it contains other renewable provisions that helped garner support from 10 of 38 Democrats.

One amendment helped reduce permitting risk for the approval of small on-site industrial wind facilities, increasing the maximum from 5 MW to 20 MW for on-location self-generation wind-farms that could avoid Ohio Power Siting Board review. Another made room for five large-scale solar power projects to qualify for funding from the “clean air” program, after a House committee had stripped the bill of most of its renewable components.

But while some were glad to see at least some renewable provisions in the bill, oil and gas groups blasted the nuclear support provisions as unnecessary.

Europe Embraces China’s Belt And Road Initiative

As a Technocracy, China is driven to create infrastructure and develop the global supply chain, both of which are central to its Belt and Road initiative. Europe is playing both sides of the fence with America on one hand, and China on the other. ⁃ TN Editor

The multipolar transformation that is occurring across the Eurasian continent confirms the industrial and diplomatic cooperation between China and the European continent in spite of strong opposition from the United States.

Xi Jinping’s visit to Europe confirms what many of us have been writing about over the past few months and years, namely, the reality of an ongoing global transformation of a world dominated by the United States to a pluralistic one composed of different powers collectively shaping a multipolar world.

Europe therefore finds itself in fortuitous position, balanced as it is between its old world links to the United States on the one side and the fledgling Eurasian one being ushered in by Russia and China on the other.

Countries like Germany and France, but even the United Kingdom, have long implemented commercial policies that encourage integration between the countries of the Eurasian supercontinent. In 2015, the United Kingdom was among the first Western countries to join the Chinese Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which finances projects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Chinese BRI mega project kicked off in 2014 with the ambitious goal of integrating trade between China and Europe by sea and by land, in the process incorporating all the countries in between. The idea, as a natural consolidation of trade, is to shorten the delivery times of goods by rail and integrate sea routes. The project covers not only ports and rail lines but also the construction of technological infrastructure to achieve global interconnectivity using the 5G technology developed by the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Germany and France have over the years deepened their partnerships with Beijing. Paris in particular boasts historical ties with China stemming from the nuclear cooperation between China General Nuclear Power Group (CGNPC) and Électricité de France (EDF) stretching back to 1978, as well as the aerospace one between Airbus and the Chinese aviation companies that has been ongoing since 1985.

Italy has in recent months approached the BRI as a result of the new government consisting of the Lega Nord and Five Star Movement (M5S). The decision to sign a memorandum of understanding between Beijing and Rome underlines how the new government wants to maintain a balanced position between Washington and Beijing in certain sectors. This is exactly the approach of Germany, which has elected to continue deepening its ties with Moscow vis-a-vis hydrocarbons and Nord Stream 2 in the face of pressure from Washington. Moreover, both Germany and Italy have confirmed that they want to rely on Huawei for the implementation and management of 5G traffic, which is fundamental to a world dominated by the internet of things.

The decisions of Germany, France and Italy to continue their cooperation with Moscow and Beijing in various fields flies in the face of the narrative advanced by the American-controlled scaremongering media controlled that attempts to discourage European politicians from acting in the interests of their countries and engaging with Russia and China.

Tim Ball On Green New Deal: Not New, Not Green, Not A Deal

The Green New Deal exposes the ultra-radical nature of UN policies of Sustainable Development. The UN is sworn to overthrow Capitalism and Free Enterprise, and it using global warming as a battering ram. ⁃ TN Editor

Here is what to do when the title is a lie. Confirm it also lies within the text. Confirm the lies in a historical and political context. Expose the lies and the people responsible. Explain, in ways the people can understand, why they can safely ignore the hysteria and actions it recommends. Attack those people and politicians that demand you pay for the lies. Then, adopt the policy of not believing anything in the new, fake news world.

.It is not “new,” it is not “green” other than in name, and it is not a “deal.” In other words, it is a technocrat’s delight because it revisits and resuscitates their goal of total government control without appearing to do so. Proponents of the original idea that humans were causing global warming are losing the war one battle at a time. They did what they always do. Ignore the evidence and move the goalposts. That is what they are doing with the New Green Deal. It is the same use of false or deliberately created science to convince people that they can save them from the sky falling. Chicken Little reappears as Big Turkey.

The last major example occurred in 2004. From 1998 onward CO2 levels continued to increase, but temperatures stopped increasing. This completely contradicted their major assumption and brought them face-to-face with Thomas Huxley’s (1825 – 1895) observation that,

The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

The emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that instead of revisiting the science they changed the name from global warming to climate change. This clever but deceitful move allowed them to avoid any evidence that contradicted their hypothesis by removing the hypothesis. It also allowed them to identify any weather event as support for their claims of human interference.

From its emergence onto the world stage in 1988 the claim of human-caused global warming (AGW) was a front for the need for not only local government control, but an over-arching one-world government. Elaine Dewar summarized the goal of Maurice Strong, the architect of Agenda 21 and its subsidiary the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as follows.

Strong was using the U.N. as a platform to sell a global environment crisis and the Global Governance Agenda.

A major piece in the platform was the creation of a global threat. It must be global to transcend national boundaries, so they could argue that no one nation could cope. They produced the major piece through the artificial construct of global warming.

It began at the 1988 US Joint Congressional Hearing when James Hansen falsely testified that he was 99% certain that humans were the cause. That was not true then, and it is not true now, but it continues as a justification for the New Green Deal. The person who organized that Hearing was former Senator Timothy Wirth. I say, former Senator because after one term he resigned and took an appointment as President of the United Nations Foundation. This organization was created from a 1998 $1 billion gift from media mogul Ted Turner. He is listed as a member of the Club of Rome along with George Soros and Wirth.

I will not dissect the New Green Deal here because it so wrong it requires a book, but it is sufficient to show the scientific inaccuracies underlying just one portion. The plan is to eliminate North American cattle because they produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Methane is 0.36% of all the greenhouse gases and only 0.000179% of total atmospheric gases. There are approximately 85 million cows in North America, but if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is serious why not eliminate the 200 million cows roaming the streets of India? Why not stop the re-introduction of Bison in North America? 150 years ago, there were an estimated 65 million producing methane. If you want to use science, then deal with variables on both sides of the formula, not just the ones that fit your political agenda.

The insanity of the New Green Deal is in the persistent attempts to do what consistently fails. Every country that tried a “green agenda” failed miserably and abandoned or is in the process of abandoning it.

The insanity includes crippling at best or destroying at worst your economy because of those countries that are forging ahead with development using fossil fuels. It is reasonable to assume that AOC and her supporters are concerned about the poor and politically handcuffed citizens. Look at any country that tried a green agenda and you see that the rich got richer and the poor became poorer. It is a classic Communist Manifesto that appears good on paper but creates exactly the opposite results. In Britain, for example, the government subsidies of alternative green energy resulted in a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. It also resulted, as one report showed, that Consumers ”Grossly Overpaying” for Electricity.

Here is what to do when the title is a lie. Confirm it also lies within the text. Confirm the lies in a historical and political context. Expose the lies and the people responsible. Explain, in ways the people can understand, why they can safely ignore the hysteria and actions it recommends. Attack those people and politicians that demand you pay for the lies. Then, adopt the policy of not believing anything in the new, fake news world.

Technocrats sucker billionaires into funding their technology pipe dreams, which effectively becomes like a self-reinforcing whirlwind of manic political behavior. Canada is a leading example of this phenomenon. ⁃ TN Editor

“Dark Green Money” is a new report by Ottawa energy policy consultant, Robert Lyman, that takes the mask off the big green funding machine behind Canada’s Climate Change “Leadership”, issued by Friends of Science on Jan. 15, 2019. According to Friends of Science, what is in play in Canada sounds like the proposed US Green New Deal, as outlined by Vox, Jan. 7, 2019. Contrary to Al Gore’s claims of industry money funding climate dissenters, as reported Dec. 21, 2018 in National Geographic, “Dark Green Money” shows that billionaire foundations with vested interests in renewables and carbon trading, along with government policies are the big money pushing the climate narrative.

The claim of a climate crisis is debunked by Emeritus Professor François Gervais of the University of Tours, in a new video presentation: “Cooling of Climate sensitivity – Anthropogenic CO2 Global Warming Challenged by 60-Year Cycle” just posted to YouTube by Friends of Science. Prof. Gervais shows evidence that there is a scientific ‘consensus’ on the nominal climate sensitivity of carbon dioxide from human emissions, meaning its long-term impact on earth’s climate is negligible.

Author Robert Lyman is a former public servant of 27 years and past diplomat for 10 years for the Canadian government. He’s appalled at the public funds wasted without any cost-benefit analysis and rarely subjected to public scrutiny.

Lyman first refers to Matthew Nisbet’s 2018 paper on “Strategic Philanthropy…”. Nisbet states that philanthropist foundations in the US have framed “climate change” as a social problem, defined it as a pollution problem, pushed to enact a “carbon price” and shifted markets in the direction of renewable energy technologies as solutions.

Lyman writes, “While the funding provided by private foundations is large, by far the largest source of funding to promote climate “mitigation” in Canada is by governments …” Canadians should not have to guess how much money is being spent by governments to fund the “Iron Triangle” of climate change confirmation bias.

The Iron Triangle refers to a paper in the Journal of Physicians and Surgeons of Fall 2013 by Richard Lindzen, explaining how ambiguous scientific statements get hyped by self-interested advocates and media, who then generate public pressure on governments to ‘take action’, who in turn feed the frenzy with funding.

Ironically, spending these green billions in attempts to stop global warming is economically detrimental for Canada according to Dr. Richard Tol. Nominal warming benefits cold countries through better growing seasons, less costs for outdoor industrial activity and heating. In his book “Climate Economics” [page 89] he states “The best-off country is Canada …” The estimated positive net benefit of CO2 emissions to Canada will steadily increase to be $100 billion by 2100.

Tol is the IPCC lead author who refused to sign his team’s report, saying it was too alarmist, neglecting human ability to adapt.

In America: The Final Assault In The War On Cash

The author does not have Technocracy in view, but only in name. Technocracy will force the extinction of cash in order to build a replacement monetary system to finance Sustainable Development that will resemble Alice in Wonderland. ⁃ TN Editor

Before I show you what I’ve learned about a plan to seize control of America’s money, let me make one point clear…

If you value sound money and political freedom… if you value limited government and taxation with representation… and if you value enterprise and privacy… then you’re going to hate the future I’m about to describe.

There is no philosophical or monetary middle ground on the issue.

You’re either with it or against it.

The Chicago Plan

In March 1933, Henry Morgenthau Jr., chairman of the Federal Farm Board, was sent a short memo titled, “Memorandum on Banking Reform.”

It was signed by Frank Knight (the acknowledged author of the memo), Garfield Cox, Aaron Director, Paul Douglas, Lloyd Mints, Henry Schultz, and Henry Simons. All of them were professors at the University of Chicago.

The memorandum advocated for full-reserve banking (FRB) in the U.S. monetary system. U.S. currency would be backed only by government debt, not bank debt (loans issued by commercial banks to private citizens and companies).

It wouldn’t nationalize the U.S. banking system. But it would nationalize the nation’s money supply.

Under this kind of system, banks could no longer “create” money by lending it into existence. Money creation would be the exclusive territory of the government of the United States.

In this system, the key government agencies could not create money through new lending. They would do so through new spending (on priorities determined by elected politicians).

CARTOONS | Steve Kelley

View Cartoon

They called it “The Chicago Plan.”

The most radical elements of the plan – which we’ll discuss shortly – were left on the shelf nearly a century ago.

But I believe it’s about to find a resurgence in modern America…

The End of Fractional Reserve

Before I show you what the implications of a modern Chicago Plan would be, it’s important you understand how money creation works today.

Despite what you may think, the central bank (the Federal Reserve) doesn’t print that much money. The vast majority of the money supply in the U.S. economy is grown by banks lending money into existence.

Commercial banks issue a loan, it appears in your account, and just like that… it’s money. From nothing, something! And then there was cash!

But here’s the other part of that process that most people don’t realize. When the banks issue a loan, they don’t have to have a dollar in cash in their vaults for every dollar in cash they lend. If they DID, then every loan to a new customer would be matched with an equal amount of savings already in the bank from another customer. That’s “full reserve” banking.

What we have today is called “fractional-reserve” banking. Why? The amount of cash savings actually held by the bank is only a fraction of the money lent by the bank. And for each dollar in saving deposits held by the bank (your money), the bank can lend up to $10 in new money (this is the secret magic of money creation).

It’s also what some people call “debt-based” money, because money is created when a new debt is born (in the form of a bank loan).

Proponents of the Chicago Plan contend that allowing banks to create credit in a fractional reserve system leads to credit cycles. And the credit cycle has booms and busts. The busts damage everyone, not just those who have borrowed and spent too much.

That’s a problem, they say. To circumvent it, there are those in power actively trying to end the banking system as we know it. They want to go back to the original idea of the Chicago Plan. And then they want to go one step further and replace America’s money with something else entirely.

America’s New Money

The main feature of the Chicago Plan is that it moves credit creation from private hands to public (government) hands, with the average American unaware of who is really moving the government hands. Money isn’t lent into existence. It’s spent into existence.

You can imagine that he who does the spending in this system has great power. That’s exactly the idea!

Under the plan, instead of stimulating growth by changing the price of money for commercial banks (which is how monetary policy currently works with the Federal Reserve and interest rates), the government would “spend” money into circulation – on public works and infrastructure projects, for example.

The quantity of money in the economy would be determined by the government, not the commercial banks. And, at least in theory, the government would enjoy vastly lower levels of debt (both absolutely, and relative to GDP) in this kind of money system. Why?

In the current system, the US Treasury raises money by selling bonds to commercial banks or the Fed, paying interest to both. Money is created by borrowing. But again, it’s debt-based money. That wouldn’t happen in the new system. But what would the new money be backed by?

Er… government debt!

The term “full-reserve banking” implies every unit of currency is backed by an actual reserve. Some advocates of full-reserve banking (including a handful of Austrian economists) believe you could back the money with gold. Thus gold would be restored as the most important reserve asset in the world.

But if your agenda is to spend money into existence in unlimited quantities, you can also use government debt as a reserve asset. There’s a lot of it already. And you can always make more!

In fact, this is a key feature of the Chicago Plan. It’s full-reserve banking where the government does all the money creation, “backed” by government debt. The commercial banks merely provide payment services or pay interest on deposits. They are forced out of the debt-based money creation business (where all the profit is, of course).

According to the theory, this new American money system would accomplish three things…

End the booms and busts of the credit cycle.

Do away with bank runs (no need to get your money out of the bank if it’s fully backed).

Eliminate the government’s debt problem. If money can be spent into existence, government borrowing and government debts are a thing of the past. If it needs more money, the government just spends it and “backs” it by issuing new bonds held by the central bank. The government could never be insolvent.

Does that sound like an improvement on the current system to you? To some people, it all sounds somewhat appealing, until you look closer…

Monetary Sovereignty

Under the Chicago Plan, the government has “monetary sovereignty.” What is monetary sovereignty? It is the complete decoupling of money from anything real.

Let me explain what I mean and why that’s so important for the value of your savings and investments today.

Under the Chicago Plan, money doesn’t have to have its roots in real value-added labor. Money doesn’t come into existence because a tradesman has created something useful and sold it to someone else, requiring money to make the transaction.

And under the new system, money certainly doesn’t have to be anything physical and scarce, like gold.

Under the new system, money can be whatever the government wants it to be.

With a monetarily sovereign government calling the shots, money is literally no object. A monetarily sovereign government wouldn’t have to borrow anymore, or pay interest. To create money, it would simply spend it into existence. Voilà!

Think of all the jobs and incomes created when a monetarily sovereign government decides to spend trillions on new infrastructure and “nation building” projects.

This is Richard Duncan’s “creditism” without the need to borrow. It is economic growth without effort, wealth without labor, riches without risk.

If you think it sounds absurd, you’re not alone. But remember what’s at stake here: total control of American money, and through it, of the economy, and of you. And it’ll be accomplished by controlling the quantity of money through a central authority.

For an idea of what that might look like – and why it’s so dangerous to your cash and savings today – consider this quote from the innocuously titled “The Case for Unencumbering Interest Rate Policy at the Zero Bound.”

It was delivered by Marvin Goodfriend of Carnegie Mellon University at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2016 (emphasis added is mine):

The most straightforward way to unencumber interest rate policy completely at the zero bound is to abolish paper currency. In principle, abolishing paper currency would be effective, would not need new technology, and would not need institutional modifications. However, the public would be deprived of the widely used bundle of services that paper currency uniquely provides.

[…] Hence, the public is likely to resist the abolition of paper currency at least until mobile access to bank deposits becomes cheaper and more easily available.

First, we have a proposal for a new system in which only the government can create money. Next, the “experts” think the most logical way to “unencumber” ineffective monetary policy is to abolish cash.

Goodfriend, by the way, was nominated by President Trump to serve on the Federal Reserve’s seven-member Board of Governors. His nomination is currently awaiting action by the U.S. Senate.

Taken together, there is a real effort underway to do away with your individual economic liberty and your preference to hold cash in the face of interest rate uncertainty. “If that could be overcome,” Goodfriend seems to be saying, “then we could make you act the way we want you to.”

Am I exaggerating? Would Wall Street allow such a fundamental change to America’s banking system? Would the Fed really abolish cash? Is there a possibility of all of this becoming a reality?

It’s happening faster than you think.

For example, the Swiss recently voted on implementing a version of the Chicago Plan earlier this month. They ultimately voted it down, but the fact that such a plan was considered in the first place shows that this idea is coming back into the mainstream.

Also, keep in mind that the Swiss, due to their constitution, get to vote on these kinds of things. It’s a direct democracy, controlled at the local level. Top-down change – the kind of change which tends to benefit the elites and those in the shadows of power – is very hard to achieve in Switzerland. But in the United States…?

What would it take for elected officials, and the American voters, to decide that the banks can no longer be trusted? What would it take for politicians and voters to agree that it’s time to end “too big to fail” banks and change the financial system so “the people” (through their elected officials, of course) can be in charge of the money system?

A stock market crash?

Another “systemically important bank” collapse?

A sovereign debt crisis?

The catalyst could come from anywhere, or nowhere. And if you think it’s out of the realm of possibility, then you lack imagination, or an understanding of history.

In Defense of Economic Liberty

In a world where government has unrestricted control of the money, and hiding in physical cash is no longer an option (because cash has been abolished), there’s no end to what a monetary sovereign could force you to do.

Control of money is a massive political power. What would happen next?

Outlawing cryptos?

Forcing negative interest rates (effectively a tax on your savings)?

Banning the purchase of items that the government deems undesirable, like weapons, alcohol, or cigarettes?

These may seem far-fetched scenarios. But they are well within the realm of possibility for a government in complete control of the money in your account.

This was the plan in 1933. It almost happened. I believe it is the plan today. And I believe it WILL happen. Much sooner than you think. Which is why you must plan for it NOW.

This is not a theoretical debate. What, exactly, is at stake for you right now?

This idea of sovereign money appeals to central planners because with it, they have absolute authority and permission to try and solve any “problem” they deem a threat.

You are that threat, because you won’t do what you’re told. You won’t spend when you’re supposed to spend, borrow when you’re supposed to borrow. And you’re likely to hoard cash and real money (precious metals) in the face of low (or negative) interest rates. That makes you an uncompliant problem for the State to solve.

When you pair it with banning cash and going all-digital, you have nothing less than the complete loss of economic liberty and freedom of action in America. THAT’s what’s at stake here. Right now.

If you’re in a situation where you can only spend money when you’re allowed to spend money, or you can only spend money that they say is money, and you can only spend money when they think it’s okay, then you’re not free.

Green Bond Investments About As Useful As S&H Green Stamps

Eco-friendly bond investments are more costly to maintain and have no price advantage over traditional bonds, yet they claimed to be are “the natural home for environmental, social and governance investing.” Mainly, they assuage the conscience of corporate issuers to prove they are “green”. ⁃ TN Editor

Among both issuers and investors, demand for climate-friendly bond continues to rise.

Ten years after the World Bank issued the first “green” bond, the market for these eco-friendly investment products is finally showing signs of maturity. And there’s good reason to believe it’s just getting started.

Today, corporations, municipalities and banks are under pressure to prove they are responsible global citizens. Issuing bonds that fund sustainable, climate-friendly projects allows them to reap those benefits while future-proofing their operations and infrastructure.

Recently, the market has shown exponential growth. The total value of green bonds issued in 2017 reached $161 billion, up 74 percent from 2016, according to Moody’s and the Climate Bond Initiative.1This year, according to the same source, that number is projected to reach $250 billion.

The market may have taken longer to develop than first expected. But there is now a healthy combination of factors in place — some that pull, others that push — that should ensure the market’s robust growth as it enters its second decade.

On the pull side is increased demand, both from issuers and investors. Issuers generally look to diversify their investor base, and green bonds are a great way to attract environmental, social and governance-minded customers. Since July 2017, the number of dedicated green-bond funds has grown to 38 from 24, an increase of 58 percent, according to Environmental Finance, an online news and analysis service. Over the same period, total assets under management in dedicated green-bond funds have risen to $5.34 billion, according to Environmental Finance’s Green Bond Database.2 Clearly, investors want to buy these sorts of products, and that’s reflected in the asset landscape.

On the push side, you have regulators and policymakers supporting this market. A lack of regulation and definitions are frequently cited as impediments to green-bond growth, but more and more countries are taking steps to change that. The European Commission took a leadership position with the release of its March 2018 report, “An Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth,”3 a roadmap of reforms for green financial products that include taxonomies, standards and best practices.

Individually, countries such as France, the U.K., Germany and Sweden have all recently issued guidelines aimed at driving a green transition. In August 2016, China released its own set of guidelines and policies, further enshrining green investment as part of the country’s national development strategy. These guidelines and policies are critical to driving investor confidence and helping issuers track their progress against environmental policy goals.

What does all this mean for issuers and investors eyeing the green bond market? There are three major trends worth noting.

First, the types of issuers entering the market will continue to broaden. Corporations, transportation agencies, utilities and airports have all embraced this form of debt to fund their transitions to renewable energies. We’re also now seeing the emergence of a sovereign green-bond market: In the past 18 months, Poland, France, Belgium Indonesia, Fiji and Nigeria have all issued sovereign green bonds.

Second, many of these issuers are returning to the market for second and third transactions. Rather than admire them as a museum pieces, issuers are treating green bonds like a regular part of their financing toolkit. This will eventually establish a green-bond curve that each issuer can use to set future pricing, a sure sign of maturity for the market, and a sign that issuers view it as a regular option when thinking about their financing.